Admissions

LREI seeks to enroll students who are bright, curious, motivated and who show strong academic promise. The School is committed to creating an environment that is reflective of the wider community by enrolling students from diverse religious, ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds and gender identities. Creating this diverse student body fosters opportunities for deeper cultural learning and understanding.

We Are LREI

Welcome to LREI. We are now, as we have always been, guided by our school's mission. As a truly progressive school community, we never shy away from the challenges and the possibilities of change and growth. It is this bold, experimental, progressive vision of education that continues to inspire and guide the LREI community today. What we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what we will do tomorrow are all a part of a coherent 14-year experience inspired by our mission.

Academics

Since its founding, the LREI experience has been grounded in progressive principles that shape the design of program in each of our divisions. These principles place students at the center of their learning experiences, call on us to narrow the distance between the world around students and their school experiences, and engage learners in authentic problem solving on a daily basis. Our mission driven approach informs all aspects of our 14-year experience.

Life @ LREI

Our founding ideals of learning that is grounded in experience, inquiry, collaboration, growth and active democratic citizenship inform every aspect of daily life at LREI. LREI truly is a community of learners; it is a place where students, faculty and families come together each day in the spirit of creativity, collaboration and consequence.

Our Community

LREI is a community built on understanding and respect for others. Like New York City, we are diverse in every sense of the word. We are scientists, artists, historians and more. We embody a wide range of interests, beliefs, family structures and backgrounds. We thrive on the unique ideas and perspectives each person brings to the school.

The Disciplines as Lenses

We prefer to think of a curriculum not in terms of subject matter, but in terms of experiences and activities.

In this way, the various subjects and their associated concepts, skills and dispositions become lenses through which learners at LREI explore the world, approach questions, and seek answers to problems. As Agnes De Lima wrote in 1942 in the seminal, but still relevant, book The Little Red School House:

We are, then, concerned in our curriculum to make sure that it affords the kind of experiences and the kind of activities which will help children grow normally and naturally. The old-line pedagogue was continually asking, "What must a child know, what knowledge is of most worth?" We ask instead, "What should a child be like, what ways of acting and what habits of response are most worthwhile?" We take the children as they are and where they are, try to understand them, and then seek to help them understand the kind of world in which they live and the part they are to play in it.

Below please find descriptions of the various disciplines and how they each serve as a lens to focus experience and learning at LREI.